6 Elements of Highly Successful Web Articles

Use these 6 Habits of Highly Successful Web Articles to generate an amazing amount of traffic to your website.

You have a website and you want traffic. Since you know that content is king on the internet you craft great content, regularly building your website via blogs and articles. After amassing a respectable following you started to notice that some posts are superstars attracting out-sized numbers of visitors even long after they are published. What is it about those posts that gets them noticed? What is it that creates this buzz? I interviewed several successful website owners and writers and found striking similarities you can use to bring amazing traffic to your website.

1. Topics

I covered this earlier with the article 6 Topics for Guaranteed Traffic. They say there are 3 things you never talk about with friends; sex, politics, and religion. And yes, all 3 are on our list. But others like tutorials and holidays attract well, too. Bonus points if you can combine one or more categories!

Tutorials

Holidays

Politics

Sensationalism / Celebrity

Legality

Religion

2. Useful

People surf the web because they are looking to find the answer to a specific problem, issue, or curiosity. They may want to learn how to change the oil in their car or just find a way to pass the time for 10 minutes. Solve that problem for them and you can build an audience.

“If you want a constant stream of traffic to a post, create something that is useful and solves a real problem.”

3. Be Unique

There are millions of websites out there. Most of them look exactly the same despite each of us being so vastly different from one another. Inject your personality into your site. Be unique! Be different! Fine your niche and write it only the way you can.

In my Hebrew blog the most popular posts are the ones that get linked on other major music Hebrew blogs, and ones that make big, bold, mega journalistic like statements. One of the biggest ones was entitled “The Best Band in the World”. I wrote it in a way that’s bold, sharp, and without compromise. With the help of links on some other major blogs, people really seemed to dig it.
-Ido Schacham Product Manager at Testuff

4. Use Great Titles

Titles attract. Titles convert. In today’s world of information overflow people scan items looking for what they need. Take advantage of this fact and incorporate some thought and strategy into your titles.

If you aren’t bold or audacious, you won’t get the audience’s attention. Try something like “The Best Band in the World.”

Alternately, try something a bit more search-specific. Think to yourself, ‘What would people type when they wanted the information in this article when they did a search on Google for it?’

5. Discussion Oriented

Open-ended questions are the best way to engage your audience whether you are on a first date, an interview, or writing a web article.

In my company blog one of my most popular posts was about testing videos. The post is open ended since it was meant to start a discussion whether testers record testing videos and why. I published messages on several QA forums and linked to it, that brought people in and it all turned into a fantastic discussion.

-Ido Schacham Product Manager at Testuff

‘What do you think?’ – kind of questions also tend to attract a lot of attention. People love to share their opinion.

6. Publicized

Of course the key to any successful web article or blog post is how well publicized it is. Think of that old phrase “If a tree falls in the woods and no one was around to hear it…” Writing for the web is very similar. If no one links to your article, and no one sees it, does it matter how good it is?

No. It doesn’t.

Try to mention your post on applicable forums as solutions to people’s issues. Links from other websites and blogs as I have done in this article can provide a TON of traffic. If all else fails, I’ve even heard of people creating a viral contest to bring attention to a single article and thus a site, product, and service.

Conclusion

In the end, there are many things that successful articles and blog posts have in common. These six seem to be fairly common. What have I left out? Tell the world below.